Monday, February 25, 2008

Medical Woes.

I admire and respect doctors who do their jobs well. I admire anyone who does their job well as long as their job is not to screw over me or anyone else, i.e. most politicians and the IRS. It’s tax time. Can ya tell? I hate inefficiency and people who have or perpetuate systems that screw with people, particularly in very important areas of life. Like doctors.

I’m mentioned before that my SO and I have decided to try to expand our little family with something that doesn’t require annual rabies shots. Lots of other kinds of shots, but not rabies. Since neither of us are spring chickens we decided to seek a bit of help from my local women’s clinic. Testing over, we were told the importance of following the natural woman’s cycle carefully. Appointments must be made and kept. A sonogram must be completed between days 3 and 5 of the cycle and again between days 12 and 15. Every thing must be timed exactly.

So today the call is made. It’s day one, let’s schedule the sonogram. Well, day 3 is Wednesday and the doctors office confesses they don’t have a sonogram tech on Wednesday, or Thursday during the day. So the sonogram will have to be at 9pm on Thursday. A joke you ask? Nope, I’m not smiling folks. Then the doctor must be seen so that she can prescribe the helpful little Clomid pills. (Yes, those of you who read Access Denied, those Clomid pills really do exist.) But the doctor isn’t available until Friday and the pills must be started on day 5.

Now why is this a problem? Because Friday is a very important children’s lit conference, one that had to be committed to seven months ago. Can the doctor read the results and call in the prescription? No. It must be face to face. Why? Is there really a big black market for Clomid?

When you sign on to treat fertility issues and everything must be timed so carefully, you would think you would plan a bit better, be a bit more flexible. Grrrr

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Not what I wanted to hear on a Monday morning. I hate mornings. I am not a morning person and never will be. No amount of “oh but look at the fresh clean day full of promise” crap will ever make me be a morning person. I like sleep. Sleep likes me. I am one of those people who can fall asleep any time, any place. I can sleep longer than my dog, and if you own a dog you know that’s saying something.

It doesn’t help the cause that I have to get up around 4:30 each morning to make myself presentable to leave the house before 6am so I can drive an hour and a half to work. The ride home is two or more hours, so I guess I’m getting off easy.

This morning I’m in the shower trying to become remotely coherent. My eyes are still closed and I’m doing the “If I don’t open my eyes, I’m not really awake” thing trying to fool my brain into thinking I’m still asleep. Not that it’s ever worked. My SO comes into the bathroom and mumbles something that sounds like it could be an alien language. I give my usual, “I haven’t had my coffee yet, so don’t bug me” one syllable grunt.

When I finally climb out of the shower I find my SO standing there with a face that looks like someone inflated it like a balloon. Another lovely allergy reaction to goodness knows what. I shove a bottle of benedryl at the poor dear with orders to take it, run downstairs and fire up the computer. Sounds like an odd reaction I know. But at that point I have only seconds left before the window on the computerized subfinder program my school district uses shuts down and starts calling subs.

How does this fit with a rant about doctors?:

Because upon calling the allergist’s office, I discover that there are no doctors available today. Evidently Monday is the new Thursday and no allergist in their group works on Mondays. They will however be happy to page someone and get a prescription called in for prednisone (without seeing my SO) or we can go to the emergency room.

*head to desk*

5 comments:

Anny Cook said...

Yep, gotta love 'em. It only took them three weeks to finally diagnose what was wrong with my daughter. Only three weeks.

Unknown said...

Sounds too hard the baby thing - can't you just adopt a cabbage patch doll?

JacquƩline Roth said...

I suggested a puppy and was reminded we have four. This was a serious discussion for us. There is an 11 year gap between us and just when I'd started to get past the ticking biological clock and think it wasn't so bad not to have kids, the freedom, the lack of responsibility, etc. The SO's parenting genes kicked in and the announcement made, "I think we're ready to have a family now. I'm 31 and settled in my career, now is a good time."

Molly Daniels said...

My bff was on Clomid several years ago. I used to tease her about having triplets!

But no luck. She went off the stuff and was soon pg with her first child. And 3 years later, had her second. If it's meant to happen, it'll happen.

Don't you just love doctor's hours? It always amazes me that my kids always are at their sickest after hours, or on the days he's off...

Phoenix said...

Good luck to the two of you, Jae. It's a huge selfless undertaking but the rewards are tremendous.